Nightcrawler

It's a breath of fresh air in the cliché, boringly mopey genre of the realistic thriller. A tense, cynical, grittily real breath of fresh air, but one nonetheless. The story centers around Lou Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal), a slightly off and almost robotic man that's extremely desperate to get a job. One night, he sees an independent camera crew capture footage of a car crash, planning to sell it to a news station, he decides to follow along. He begins his new career of filming crime and disaster scenes right as the action is taking place with a crappy camcorder, a crappy car, and a fidgety, broke assistant named Rick (Riz Ahmed) with a crappy GPS, leading to a road that drives Bloom from slightly off to completely psychotic.
    The film takes it's already solid, original basis and creates an absolute powerhouse of a personal journey deeper into a man's insanity, social satire of the news industry, and twisted black comedy. A completely real psychopath is created in the character of Bloom, through brilliant writing that subtly transforms the character throughout, without being overly melodramatic with his level of insanity or making the twists of the character's logic feel out of his range and forced. The character is only perfected by Gyllenhaal's performance, who brings an eerie life to Bloom. He completely gives in to the character and never lets up, fitting into the unnatural dialogue with an ease that makes Bloom feel like any other "slightly off" person you know if they just tipped over the edge.
    What furthers the realism and fresh thrills of the film are the cinematography and music. None of the camerawork uses overtly dramatic shadows, none of the colors feel tinted or edited to create a scary atmosphere, and it never overuses the shaky cam technique to be intense, it simply feels natural.  None of the scenery is unrealistically clean or dirty, none of the blood and seedy backstreets are glamorized. The real-world feel is continued with the camera always being from the perspective of our main characters, so when they're outsiders on the action, filming from a safe distance, the cameras stay at that distance as well. It's eerie with how reminiscent it all is off what we do in fact see of crime scene on TV, and that's not even touching the footage of Bloom's that shown on the news stations for stories. Even the use of real products displayed on billboards, sides of buildings continues this. They're never prominently displayed as product placement, but logos for Chase, Facebook, and others will show up for scattered moments in the movie and work to keep the movie in our world.
    The music is riskily imaginative, adding a dimension that further separates Nightcrawler from the usual Hollywood "gritty" thriller. When Bloom does something horrifying that further sinks him into his job and therefore sinks him into his insanity as well, the music doesn't match the creepy tone of the moment. No, instead the music consistently plays as the soundtrack inside of Bloom's mind. That means that whenever Bloom does something deranged like, say, moving a dead body under a streetlight to get a better shot before the cops even show up, the music isn't a terrifying drone. Bloom is smiling the whole time he's moving the body, realizing how far ahead he can get in his job with what he's doing, so the music is matching his mindset with a triumphant melody playing the whole time. And that upbeat feel to the music is genuinely more creepy than any downbeat instrumentation could have been.
    There are other elements to the plot that excel the movie beyond a straightforward suspense film. It's a satire of the modern-day standards of television news, or lack thereof. It's all well delivered, such as when we the news station use footage that we know Bloom got illegally and highly immorally, but oddly resembles footage that shows up on the news in real life. The carelessness the main news executive (Renee Russo) has to how the footage was received, and also the blasé way she explains what crimes attract viewers and which ones didn't is also on prominent display. There's a cruel comedy that comes out of it and how blatantly Bloom wants to exploit the system. He doesn't hide his motives to manipulate. He directly states to Russo's character at one point that he wants to be in a relationship with her just to go farther with his business, and those moments create a sadly sick representation of how the world of cold hard business works when you pull back the layers of bull crap.
    Nightcrawler is a bright spot in a dying sub genre overrun by "Taken" knock offs. It's sleekly filmed, fully original and ambitious, effectively written and paced, and led by a powerhouse performance by Gyllenhaal. So go out and support this indie looking hollywood film. Because the trailer for Taken 3 (sorry, "Tak3n", aren't they so clever) came before this movie, and lord knows Nightcrawler needs your support more.